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Thursday, April 23, 2009

While you would soon hear more news on PB-4 and rest of the pending issues, I thought I would update readers on a very important development.

As some of the readers may recall this earlier blog post, Election officials have not been carrying out house to house survey and enumeration in military and cantonment areas for registration of voters as is provided under the statute. In fact, the easiest way out to ensure participation of service voters is house to house enumeration and not filling up of Form-6 as is the practice - which basically is a residual provision if the name is not included through house to house survey or for any other reason.

The Hon’ble Punjab & Haryana High Court today issued a Notice of Motion to the Election Commission and the Central Govt as to why house to house enumeration was not being carried out by election officials in Cantonments. While the case may not result in action as far as the current elections are concerned, it should definitely settle the law for all times to come.

The Petitioner in the Writ Petition is Brig H S Ghuman, Shaurya Chakra, a veteran of the Punjab Regiment.

13 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I am staying in delhi cantt. They came to office asking to fill voter ID forms only family members not single living in barracks and took away. Further that is the end. elections in delhi is nearing. The present govt may be scared off the service voters because they may go against the present govt.

This is for sure a welcome development. Although a lot of initiative has gone in from the side of Armed Forces into getting personnel and families registered as voters, the process can't be said to be complete. Knowing the level to which AF can raise the level of personnel participation in getting themselves registered, this exercise needs to be carried out more stringently.

Although wishful thinking, it would be a welcome step if courts in other states followed similar precedence. And how this issue has come to notice of the Hon'ble Punjab High Court, does not require much guess work. Thanks Maj Navdeep. :)

Many a times in the past postals ballets of service persons have changed the outcome of results.Politicians are scared.Especially the political party in power is scared and will try their best to not let serving persons get enrolled in place of posting.It is simplly dirty politics .

I am staying in Guwahati.Today was the polling day.I could not vote as I was not registered.In our cantt(narengi)no house to house regn was carried out by election officials.Even no effort on the part of local sub area to guide any service voter.It shows lot is to be done educate and motivate our own community.

dear sir,a lot of effort has gone into getting max service pers regd as voters in delhi area and quite a few voter id cards have been handed over to the indls and families in the cantt too but there are far too many left behind.i was incharge for for my unit and almost 60% have got voter cards while mine own has been left out.it is a welcome progress nonethe less.now we need to get our reps in delhi cantt board and get more say in local adm as well.amit

Dear everyone ,it is a fact that if proper efforts were put in most of us could have voted but first the effort from within & not from the mil organisation .I have observed the ignorance of our officers & men & its a pity .Everyone wants to be spoon fed .In this case I would say lets spoon feed them .

M a poor guy from emeralds. Despite filling out Form-6 and forwarding it to the returning officer of the constituency my family and i went from booth to booth for hours together only to return home sweating without being allowed to exercise our rightful franchise. Isn't it an open mockery of the system and a fit case for bringing the concerned pen-men to book for deliberate dereliction of official duty?